As is known in the art, there are a wide variety of protocols for controlling the flow of data in a network. For example, the Fibre Channel communications protocol is designed to optimize specific types of data traffic including block level data transfers. This protocol is designed to have high performance and high scalability: current standards propose 10,000 Mb/s speeds. A single Fibre Channel fabric can support from about 2 to over 16 million concurrent ports using a 24-bit address identifier. The Fibre Channel protocol supports a heterogeneous system allowing different peripherals using different cabling types to communicate at high speed. Exemplary device types include supercomputers, mainframes, workstations, desktop PCs, other Fibre Channel switches, and tape drives.
Network Switch Topology or Fabric is used to form a mesh of connections. Each attached device is able to communicate with other attached devices. In a Fibre Channel network, a communication channel is established between two nodes where the channel's primary task is to transport data from one point to another. The Fibre Channel switch provides flexible circuit/packet switched topology by establishing multiple simultaneous point-to-point connections. A Fibre Channel switch centralizes data flow in a Storage Area Network (SAN). This centralization allows for simplified Quality of Service (QoS) architectures. Management of the SAN is simplified as it is reduced to the set of devices forming the backbone of the fabric.
In known approaches, the redundant elements in a high availability environment do not operate in such as way as to eliminate frame loss. While the disruption is generally specified in terms of milliseconds, data loss for a high performance device can be extreme. For example, a network switch containing 288 2.5 Gb/s gigabit ports running line rate will lose approximately 72 Megabytes each millisecond during a switchover event.
It would, therefore, be desirable to overcome the aforesaid and other disadvantages.